A straightforward if somewhat idealistic account of the history of modern Israel, especially as it intersects with the personal history of one of its foremost statesmen. Herzog, former president of Israel and author of several books about Israel and military affairs (Heroes of Israel: Profiles of Jewish Courage, 1989, etc.), recounts highlights of his public life while offering insights and personal musings on the history of the state of Israel. Born into a respected rabbinical family in Ireland and educated at the Universities of London and Cambridge, Herzog migrated to Israel in 1935, when his father was elected chief rabbi of Palestine. We follow his career of public service from army general to director of military intelligence, from first military governor of the West Bank to Israel's ambassador to the UN. Throughout his career he was guided by the principle that Israel's mission was not just to survive, but to serve as a much needed model of morality. After the Six-Day War, Herzog recalls, Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek stormed into his office, insisting that milk be immediately distributed to the Arab children in East Jerusalem. Herzog insists that the Arabs repeatedly missed opportunities for peace because of their inflexibility and pride. However, he does see a new Middle East emerging. Despite the recent election of Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister, Herzog believes that peace is on the horizon. Arafat, he writes, has gone ``from hostility to partnership in a working relationship, one of the more astonishing relationship shifts in history.'' If Arafat proves able to contain terrorism, ``the Palestinian problem can be solved by the end of the century.'' Herzog's passionate asides on such matters as the insidious racism of the late rabbi Meir Kahane, and the harsh sentence given to Jonathan Pollard, convicted of spying for Israel in America, make this ``living history'' a lively one. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Nov. 6, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-43478-X
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1996
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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